


In Dreams He Came

by stefanie_bean



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Phantom of the Opera (2004)
Genre: Complete, M/M, Male Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 05:43:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stefanie_bean/pseuds/stefanie_bean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young man can't help his dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Dreams He Came

Night rustled on the curtains like a woman waving her handkerchief good-bye. Raoul looked out the tall mullioned window to the street, as if for the hundredth time. Nothing ever changed on this street, not a lace curtain, not a rubbish bin, and certainly not the fixed and unmoving street lamp whose cold white circle of light circumscribed the pavement. In this respectable neighborhood, no vermilion-clad tart dared pose beneath it. The police would see to that.

He sighed and closed the heavy velvet drape. Some white roses drooped in the crystal vase on the side table. _Can't Christine get the maids to replace the flowers daily_? he thought irritably. He ran his finger along the table idly. No dust, at least.

The staircase beckoned, silent bedrooms upstairs full of breath, full of sleeping people. _All my responsibility_ , he thought. _My household_. The whole weight of the slumbering second story suddenly pressed on him, and instead of going up to bed, he slumped over to the sideboard and poured himself a snifter of brandy.

Since Christine and the servants were upstairs, he had already removed his jacket, vest, and suspenders. He pulled off his boots and slid them under the ottoman. The brandy went down in three gulps, and he poured himself another, larger this time.

Stretched out in the wide leather wing-backed chair, feet pointed toward the fire, he rubbed his belly thoughtfully. _Not out of the Navy two years_ , he thought, _and I'm already getting soft. Not that it matters to her. It's not as if she thinks of my body when she lies unmoving under me_ , and he looked at the dusky staircase which led to his wife's bedroom. The tender belly flesh curled under his hand, pleased to be touched. He raised his wandering hand up to his chest, moving it around the breast, hovering over and then lightly tickling a nipple.

 _Stop that, what are you doing_? he thought, and took another drink, sighing heavily. The golden firelight played over him like a warm orange bath, making him uncomfortable, and he shifted a little.

 _Too much brandy in the evenings_ , he thought. _Christine used to play draughts with me, or even chess, or we would talk. But now it's all changed. At least a little brandy before bed keeps away the dreams._

The dreams. His hand fell onto his belly again, only a thin layer of linen between him and the warm skin beneath, caressing, then softly wandering down to where hip and thigh met. Slowly he sank under the fire's warmth.

Gold, gold and black, and a man with gold shining on his reddish skin, gold light forming a halo around his wild, ragged hair, shoulders sharp in the shadows.

Raoul jumped up with a start as a stir between his legs half-woke him, just a slight lengthening, a thickening, a little shift of the skin that normally sheathed his sex. 

_It's the fire_ , he thought. _I can't look at firelight or a blazing candelabra without feeling it. That light on my skin. A smell on my skin, sharp and alkaline and rank. My God, I'll never be free of it. I said it once, he will haunt us till we're dead, and it's true._

Draining the glass, he set it on the sideboard and trudged heavily up the stairs. 

The thickening between his legs didn't go away, and so he tried Christine's door experimentally. It was locked as it had been every night for almost a year, since Luc-Pierre's birth. The nursery door was right next to it, and he tried that one. It swung open silently, the hinges smooth and oiled. 

There was a door between the nursery and Christine's room, and sometimes she kept it open. _She can't keep me out forever, it's not decent,_ he argued with himself bitterly. _I know she's afraid of another baby. But it's been almost seven months. Aren't women designed to bear children, anyway? The doctor said that the next ones would probably go easier. She must concede that I am her husband, that I have rights._

A low snore distracted him. The night nurse shifted her heavy hips in the narrow bed, and in the cot next to her slept Luc-Pierre in perfect silence. With a flash of irritation, Raoul covered the baby's exposed legs. 

He tried the door. Locked. A wave of sadness and self-pity washed over him as he watched the woman wide and round under the thin blanket. One of her plump breasts had almost fallen out of her nightdress, and it rose and fell with her breath. Before he could fend off the thought, he imagined pressing himself against her bouncing resilient flesh. Shaking his head didn't dislodge that vision, so he slipped out of the nursery and went into his room.

Raoul crawled under the goosedown comforter, caressed and cossetted. The thick cover warmed up with the heat of his body and reflected it back. His almost-quiet sex stirred again, then throbbed and pushed forth, thick and full, and he closed his eyes, quietly desperate. 

_I'm twenty-four years old, not some dried-up old man. My wife is locked in her bedroom, and no end of that in sight. My head is spinning from all that brandy, and this rogue flesh between my legs won't leave me alone. And then there are the dreams._

They started a few months after Luc-Pierre's birth, and every one was different, yet they all grew like shoots from the same thick trunk. He was deep underground, wet but not cold, and bathed in a syrupy golden light that rubbed him all over, like hands. The man was there, his shirt open to his belly, his face all red and twisted on one side, and beautiful as a marble statue on the other. A light, mocking smile flickered on his lips.

Sometimes Christine was there, too, standing on the far side of the underground lake. Sometimes she watched the two of them together, and once he mounted her while the man watched. But it was like play-mounting; the real pleasure came when he moved from Christine to the man himself, and laid himself down on his chest, moving his mouth among the sweat and the fur, a smell always in his nostrils, deep and dark and bitter.

Raoul tried to push the memories aside. _What did Brother Martin say in catechism class, hands outside the covers? Don't eat or drink before you go to bed. Take a cold bath. Keep up vigorous exercise._ He felt the little rolls on his sides. _Wrong on every count, there._

Touch me, his stiff, hot flesh begged from under the nightshirt. It's been so long. Aren't you full to bursting? Some men take the maid, and a few even take the stableboy. That's not for you, you're a man of honor. All you have to do is slide your hands down over me, and in a few minutes you'll sleep like your baby in the next room, deeply and without dreams. 

He cursed, and a tear or two stung in the corner of his eye. _I can fight this_ , he thought. Sooner or later I'll sleep, I always do, and already his limbs felt warmed and heavy by the cover, warm as if a body lay on top of him, pressing down with weighty sensuous pressure. _Think of something else, like the trip you're to make next week to collect Father's rents. You'll have to hire a few strong men to go with you, as some of the tenants don't want to pay, or can't. Think of how snarled Father's accounting books have become in the past year, and how you'll have to winnow out the errors for weeks, to get them all straight._

Gradually his sex softened, but not entirely, not yet wanting to give up the struggle. Finally, subdued by the down and the brandy, he slept, and dreamt.

Candles, so many candles, their substance melting down to thick lacy drips. The other man's twisted rugged face flows like wax too, wax from a brown candle, and Raoul sees that melting face in his sleep. Deep in dream, Raoul stirs, and his thick erect flesh burrows into a fold of the covers, snuggling like a mole into the dark embrace of the earth, free of his watchful eye, free to dream.

Raoul's tied up to the portcullis, but the water isn't cold. Instead it's like a bath, not hot as when you first get in, but warm as if the water has cooled for awhile, so that it laps warmly about you without burning. The water caresses him like that, right at the level of his hips, just a little warmer than blood.

From across the lake the man swaggers towards him, and that light wicked smile lights up his face. His hips pivot like pistons, oiled and smooth. He lopes on thighs like springs of iron. Under the man's ravening look Raoul squirms, a rabbit caught in a trap. The water swirls around his legs as the man moves towards him, and Raoul's sex comes to attention, fully unsheathed and pulsing with anticipation. He's hotly aware that neither of them wear any trousers.

 _There was a kiss, long ago, two kisses, really. Christine had them then, why shouldn't I now?_ he thinks. The man looms over Raoul, taller by half a head. He puts his hands around Raoul's neck lightly, experimentally, and then runs his hands down over the whole length of Raoul's body, rubbing his thighs. Upwards travel the caressing hands and meets at Raoul's own, but the man doesn't untie him. Instead, he pulls the bonds a little tighter with one hand, stroking Raoul with the other. 

Raoul sags weakly with pleasure, roused to a pitch of desire by the helplessness of being tied to that iron screen, his chest and naked legs open and vulnerable like the breast of a soft pigeon ready for piercing by the beak of the hawk. Raoul's forgotten all anger, feeling only a fierce aching anticipation as the man's curved, carved mouth descends to his own, the man's mouth still curled into an imp of a smile, the beaked grin of a bird of prey.

As so often happens in dreams, Raoul feels as if he's two people at once. He's himself, but Christine drapes over him as he stands inside her skin. When he tilts his face up to let the man kiss his mouth, it's how he saw Christine reach up so many months ago. He thinks he's forgotten, but he's back there all over again. Instead of helplessly watching, he's feeling the man's mouth approach as she did, expectation shuddering all through him. Suddenly, roughly, the man crushes Raoul to his wet, thick chest, sucking on his mouth in wide wild circles. Raoul buckles under the assault of the kiss, a pigeon smashed in midair by the diving hawk. 

_He wants my tongue_ , Raoul thinks. Save for that snowy night on the rooftop with Christine, Raoul has hardly ever had a tongue in his mouth in his life, not even after months of married love. Now Christine dispenses only dry perfumed kisses that smell of rosewater or mint, proper kisses one would expect of a decent wife. 

But Raoul hungers for the wet slithery struggle of mouth on mouth. So when the man thrusts in his own hot pulsing muscle to ravish Raoul's mouth, Raoul opens his own up wide, giving up his tongue, his whole mouth in return. And never has his tongue been sucked so desperately, practically pulled out by the roots. Conquered, he groans with deep pleasure. 

Wetness runs down his cheek to his chin, flooding him with smell-memory. After that terrifying contest under the earth, the man's musk on Christine seemed foul and rank to him, but now it tastes delicious, and he can't get enough. Raoul sucks the taste out of the other, pulling on his tongue as if it was a sweet and he a child trying to get to the soft delicious core inside.

The man's kiss overpowers him. He would have sagged and fallen into the warm water, but his bonds hold him up. They break apart, gulping for breath. The man smirks at Raoul and unties the ropes gently. He rubs Raoul's wrists tenderly, and Raoul doesn't even think to fight. Instead, over the man's body Raoul's hands go, and the man's like iron, stiff with muscle under skin like buttery tanned leather, even his backside is hard. The man grips Raoul's buttocks and kneads them like bread dough, and suddenly Raoul sags soft and pliable under his touch. Soft everywhere, that is, except that hard throbbing intensity which has taken him over entirely.

The man lifts Raoul out of the water as effortlessly as if he were Christine herself, hot hands playing over Raoul's soft rear as he carries him towards the shore. Delightful hot licks run all around Raoul's thighs as fingers explore up and down the crack of his bottom. Inside he feels that vague insistent hum that tells him fulfillment is near. 

There's no rush of cool air as they leave the water; instead, it's even hotter outside. The man sets Raoul down and they slide slick with sweat against each other. The man leans back in a low chair, his legs spread apart, his face set in a snarl of desire. His eyes pierce Raoul as thoroughly as his tongue did, and Raoul falls to his knees before him on the soft rug, weak with lust.

 _Satisfy me,_ the man says imperiously, arms spread out. _I don't care how. Just do it._ The glow of a hundred candles burns his buttery skin all gold. Raoul stares at the man's long, vein-laced flesh, the plump rosy crown, the single eye with its predatory wink. _What do I do_? he wonders, almost panicking. Then it comes to him, _What I like, he would like_ , and he grasps the man and begins to stroke. His other hand finds himself so that both hands work together in rhythm, an engine of delight pumping now up, now down, now in synchrony, now out of it.

Raoul can't tell whose groans are whose. He looks up and the man's face is racked with beauty and pain all at once, his mouth open into a round ring of pleasure, his eyes shut and rolled back in his head. A wave of wild happiness washes over Raoul as he realizes, _He likes it, he likes how I touch him, he's pleased_ , and another wave of delight comes, then another, until the sweet agony in his body fills like a cup, and then overflows.

 

Raoul woke, washed onto the shore of waking by an unstoppable sweet wave. As the first few scalding drops left him, he wrapped himself in his fingers and thrust powerfully and without thought, hips plunging. Memory poured out of him in a long arc of pleasure's white blood. A tender glow bathed him along with the few remaining drops. With it came the shame, the embarrassment, and a forgotten hot jealousy. 

His other hand grasped nothing, only air. A soft golden image of air and flame faded into the rustle of the night and disappeared into the cold congealing dawn.

A few moments later, Raoul slept without dreams.

 

( _The end_ )


End file.
